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A week ago at this time, the House Republican majority was down to just 219 members. On Friday, that total slipped to 218 as Colorado’s Ken Buck exited Capitol Hill. The same day, Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin announced that he’s also resigning, which means the GOP majority in the chamber will have just 217 members.
On the House floor, that means that Republican leaders will need Democratic votes if more than one of their own members balks in response to any given bill.
With margins like these, Democrats believe they have a real opportunity to flip House control in the upcoming elections and make House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries the next speaker. But what if the party and its leaders didn’t have to wait until 2025 to take control? As The Hill noted, one GOP lawmaker expressed concerns along these lines.
Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.) raised concerns Monday that a dwindling House GOP majority due to multiple vacancies could hurt the caucus’s prospects and may even lead to Democrats taking over the chamber. ... “We’re perilous. We could end up having a Speaker Hakeem Jeffries in the interim here while we’re waiting for special elections,” she added, referring to the New York Democrat who serves as House Minority Leader.
As a video clip from Tenney’s Fox Business interview suggested, the congresswoman didn’t appear to be kidding.
She’s not alone in thinking along these lines. Norm Ornstein, one of the nation’s most prominent political scientists, recently suggested via social media that it makes sense for House Democrats to at least prepare for the possibility of being in the majority in 2024.
To be sure, the arithmetic gets tricky. The GOP’s majority in the chamber is vanishingly small — though upcoming special elections will give the party a little more breathing room — but we’re not yet looking at an institution in which Democrats will have more seats.
At least, that is, in an official capacity. In practical terms, however, with some members occasionally having an illness or a family emergency, there are days in which there are more Democrats on the House floor than Republicans — which actually happened in late January.
Around the same time, the New York Times reported that if this were to start happening with greater frequency, Democrats “would not hesitate to capitalize on the situation.”
“We’d elect a speaker,” Democratic Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland said.
This is not to say that Democrats should get their hopes up, but the idea that the party could end up with some kind of majority in the coming weeks and months isn’t nearly as far-fetched as it might’ve seemed last year.